For the first time ever, according to the Army Times, a brigade of active duty, battle-hardened U.S. troops will be under the command of NorthCom and deployed stateside starting Oct. 1, 2008.  The Times reported that the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team will begin this “permanent mission” and that other active duty troops will take over after 12 months.

NorthCom is “a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.”

The Army Times reported that the duties of these troops could include “civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as a massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.”

There are plenty of conspiracy theories out there attempting to explain why, over 7 years after the 09-11 attacks, we are just now deploying active duty troops for a permanent mission in the U.S., especially if the reason for deploying them is the possibility of trouble at home.  I’ll leave those alone for now.

I believe the questions are provocative enough.

Why has the mainstream media under-reported that US troops are coming, beginning WEDNESDAY, 10-01-08?  (I’ve been unable to find any mainstream media reports online.)

Is the “lipstick on a pig” story exponentially more important than this one, based on the amount of coverage we’ve seen so far?

Why are the posse comitatus statutes and the 1807 Insurrection Act being subverted by the John W. Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2006 with virtually no public debate or concern?

I’m no fan of Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., but according to Congressional Quarterly, Inc., he said that the 2006 act “’subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit the military’s involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial law.

The changes to the Insurrection Act will allow the President to use the military, including the National Guard, to carry out law enforcement activities without the consent of a governor,’ he said.

Moreover, he said, it breaks a long, fundamental tradition of federal restraint.

Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy.

And he criticized the way it was rammed through Congress.

It ‘was just slipped in the defense bill as a rider with little study,’ he fumed. ‘Other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals.’”  (End Quote)

My final thoughts: Why now?  Could this deployment be related to our financial crisis/bank runs, or the election that is supposed to occur in a few short weeks?  Could this be related to potential retaliatory terrorist attacks if Iran is attacked?

After Googling for quite some time, the closest I could come to mainstream media coverage of this story was this short clip from the independent news organization, Democracy Now (not considered mainstream, but I can get them on Free Speech TV, channel 9415 on Dish Network).

I believe this story is much more important than the response we’ve seen so far from the agenda-setting media would tend to indicate.  I hope they will pick it up soon.  (The agenda-setting media are organizations like The New York Times, CNN, ABC, CBS etc.  If these outlets don’t cover a story, the smaller ones usually don’t either, since they tend to follow the lead of the big dogs.)

I know my readers are noticing that we’re living in historic times and that it may be wise to pay attention to what’s happening in our country, even if Katie Couric has nothing to say on the topic.

Let’s talk about this!  (I’d especially like to hear from military personnel, journalists and legal experts.)

Someone was published in the Rapid City Journal’s “Two Cents” on Sunday (09-21-08), complaining, “Where else can you sell something you don’t own except the stock market?  Short selling should all be banned.”

Well, I’m all for the banning of so-called naked short selling, a situation where you can short stock you don’t own.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer complained about this situation and how the current administration’s laissez-faire SEC was unwisely allowing it, even though the rules against it were supposedly already on the books.

I don’t, however, agree that all short selling should be banned.

I don’t even agree with the SEC’s recent decision to ban short selling in just the financial sector.  We’re supposed to be a capitalistic country, and we could see unintended consequences.

As our financial situation continues to worsen and the markets continue to slump, we may see a time in the near future when the SEC bans short selling in other sectors, especially if we see a crash similar to what happened during the Great Depression.  At any rate, the more bans you see, the more desperate the situation has become.

I believe today’s (09-22-08) poor market performance was related to a shift in thinking about financial institutions, from them being “too big to fail” to being “too big to bail.”  In other words, the smart money is realizing that our government can’t afford these bailouts, as I alluded to in a previous post.

At the same time, Democrats are complaining that the bailouts aren’t big enough!  Nancy Pelosi is asking for money to go to the little guys hurt by the sub-prime crisis, when we can’t afford to bail out the big guys!  (And should we even be bailing out anyone?)

We’re in a rough situation with or without bailouts, but I’m afraid that a precedent has been set which will eventually make a bad situation worse.

I’ll write more about this in a future post, especially since I got killed on Friday with ProShares UltraShort Financials (SKF).  I sent $47.96 a share to money heaven, largely because of this ban on short selling in the financials.

Yes, this may have been a stupid panic sell, but how about a bailout for me, Nancy Pelosi?  Wasn’t I smarter than those who were LONG financials and housing?  After all, I was just a victim of the SEC!

According to Dylan Ratigan from CNBC’s Fast Money, today was the “sixth biggest session loss in history.”  He’s calling today “Black Monday.”

The Dow was down over 500 points; the NASDAQ, over 80 points, and the S & P about 81 points.

What led up to today’s losses?

First it was Countrywide, then Bear Stearns, then Fannie and Freddie.

Today, the markets didn’t respond favorably to the Chapter 11 filing of Lehman Brothers and the fire sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America.  Two historic pillars of Wall Street disappeared over the weekend.

AIG is also in trouble, pummeled 61% today.

Even the venerable Goldman Sachs took a big hit, probably exacerbated by Goldman mistakenly predicting higher oil prices, which have tanked instead.

I think the markets performance today is an indication that people are finally waking up to the fact that the sub-prime crisis is worse than many originally thought.

Some would still disagree with me and say we’re near a bottom.

I say we’re still in the beginning stages of this crisis!  These are historic times and there’s more blood-letting to come!  I will prepare myself accordingly.

I can’t blame our government for drawing a line in the sand regarding further bail-outs.  Bail-outs reward risky, dumb behavior, and perpetuate the problems that got us into trouble in the first place.

But the biggest problem for me with any further bail-outs would be our national debt, which I discussed in a previous post.

Our economy and our people are in for massive pain whether the government tries to bail everyone out, or keeps going with more allowed failures.  I believe their line in the sand is the lesser of two evils, which means we’ll see more failures.

I’m sure many if not most of our readers are feeling pain today.  While it’s been rough for me the last year or so, today was different.

I have two Scottrade accounts.  One was up $213.80 today, and the other was up $105.24.

How did I do it?

Well, for the last year or so, because of my attitude about the sub-prime crisis, I’ve hedged my accounts with gold (GLD), silver (SLV) and shorting the financial sector (SKF).  I’ve also kept the majority of my accounts in cash.

Just in case my pessimism was wrong, I also bought a wind energy company called Broadwind Energy (BWEN) and the big pharma company, Merck (MRK).  I’ve been getting killed in these two stocks after a short, quick profit in Broadwind over the summer.  (I got in and out quickly for a nice profit and then got in again, which may have been a mistake.)

Although markets rarely go straight up or down, I’m not too optimistic at this point for the markets having a good opening tomorrow.

What do YOU think?

I’m getting the impression that some questions aren’t supposed to be asked.

Legal commentator Daniel B. Evans has defined tax protesters as people who ‘refuse to pay taxes or file tax returns out of a mistaken belief that the federal income tax is unconstitutional, invalid, voluntary, or otherwise does not apply to them under one of a number of bizarre arguments.’”

So arguments that the IRS doesn’t have the authority to tax our income are considered “bizarre” by some authorities?  Am I supposed to be intimidated into not questioning the IRS’s authority? Luckily, I don’t have a journalism career at risk and I like to think that I question what I’m told, so I’ll happily forge ahead.

I highly recommend the documentary, “America: Freedom to Fascism,” by the late Aaron Russo. This film has caused me to think really hard about some of the “bizarre” arguments of the tax protester movement. Russo has a great ability to make “bizarre” arguments seem quite reasonable-even compelling.

Please check out this excerpt from the film where Russo interviews former IRS Commissioner and former General Counsel to the IRS, Sheldon Cohen. Russo questions Cohen regarding the IRS’s constitutional authority.

According to Cohen, “the IRS code is authorized by the 16th amendment.”  In response, Russo cites the U.S. Supreme Court decisions of Brushaber v Union Pacific Railroad, 240 U.S. 1 (1916) and Stanton v Baltic Mining, 240 U.S. 103 (1916), in support of his position that the 16th amendment doesn’t give our government any new taxing authority.    In response to this assertion, Cohen’s only defense seems to be in calling the Supreme Court decisions “inapplicable” to the IRS.  How could U.S. Supreme Court decisions interpreting constitutional government authority be “inapplicable” to the IRS?

Could this interview have been misleadingly edited?  We would almost have to see the entire interview unedited to answer that.

I certainly don’t have all the answers on this issue and I’m no constitutional scholar.  However, I do find Russo’s questions and arguments highly interesting.

Some might say, “Hey, why make a big issue out of this. We all need to pay our taxes for our government to function.” My response would be, “Our country is supposed to be governed by the rule of law. If our government fails to follow the rule of law, then it fails to function.”

Ask your American Indian neighbors how important it is for our government to abide by the rule of law.  You may be next in line, pleading your case.

Historically, many white folks probably supported violating the Ft. Laramie Treaty of 1868.  Many probably cited Manifest Destiny and how the gold and land in the Black Hills really belonged to the whites because it was given to whites by God and how those “savages” had no use for it.  Maybe they thought, “If God has no use for this treaty, then why should we?”

The human psyche has an incredible capacity for rationalization, especially when it comes to power and money.  Could this be happening within the power structure of the IRS?

Comments anyone?

Here’s a link to the entire documentary on Google video: America: Freedom to Fascism